Golem gameplay trailer reveals a story of a young girl and her shapeshifting friend

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Golem is a side-scrolling puzzle-adventure game about a young girl and her shapeshifting golem friend, who set off to explore an ancient tower and reactivate the machines inside. It was announced last summer by developer Longbow Games, which today released a trailer providing the first look at how the game will actually play.

Golem will feature ten levels set across a variety of environments, filled with puzzles that will require the unique abilities of both characters to solve. Doing so will restore the machines, and also reveal the secrets of the tower and the people who built it—and of the mysterious golem at the center of the journey.

The trailer is lovely (the music is nice, too) but it's the promise of the story that really gets my attention. I'm not particularly skilled with platformers (to put it mildly) but I'll power through them if they can keep me interested. The Trine games did it with a deft blend of fairy tale narrative and spectacular visuals, and I hope Golem can pull it off too.

One other interesting aspect of Golem is its source: Longbow has been around for quite a few years and is probably best known for the Hegemony series of strategy wargames. Lead designer Rob McConnell acknowledged that unusual change in direction when Golem was announced, saying, "This is the first time we've created a game that revolves so closely around the characters and where we've had the freedom to develop a world tailored to telling their unique story."

Golem is expected to be out early (but later than now) this year.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.